Salazkina Masha - Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema

SOUND, SPEECH, MUSIC IN SOVIET AND
POST-SOVIET CINEMA

Edited by Lilya Kaganovsky and
Masha Salazkina

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sound, speech, music in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema / edited by
Lilya Kaganovsky and Masha Salazkina.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-253-01104-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-253-01095-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-253-01110-7 (ebook) 1. Motion picturesSoviet Union. 2. Film soundtracksSoviet Union. 3. Motion picture musicSoviet UnionHistory and criticism.

I. Kaganovsky, Lilya, editor. II. Salazkina, Masha, editor.

PN1993.5.R8S67 2013

781.5420947084dc23

2013042567

1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14

Masha Salazkina

Nikolai Izvolov

Joan Titus

Valrie Pozner

Natalie Ryabchikova

Emma Widdis

Evgeny Margolit

Jeremy Hicks

Oksana Bulgakowa

Elena Razlogova

Kevin Bartig

Anna Nisnevich

Joan Neuberger

Peter Schmelz

Lilya Kaganovsky

THIS VOLUME CAME about as a result of our mutual frustration with the lack of English-language materials on sound in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema. In it, we have tried to bring together new work by scholars from several disciplines, providing a larger historical framework for the discussion of the sonic turn in Soviet film studies, as well as close readings of individual films that pay particular attention to the way sound, speech, and music operate in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema. We are grateful to Indiana University Press and in particular to our editor Raina Polivka, for her enthusiasm, advice, and support of this project. We also owe many thanks to the commitment and patience of our contributors to this project as the volume has gone through its various incarnations, as well as to the support and interest of several fellow-travelers and interlocutors, in particular Polina Barskova, Birgit Beumers, Vincent Bohlinger, Andrew Chapman, Katerina Clark, Nancy Condee, Julian Graffy, Naum Kleiman, Vera Kropf, Susan Larsen, John MacKay, Joshua Malitsky, Simon Morrison, Sergei Oushakine, Amy Sargeant, and Mark Slobin, as well as to our two external reviewers, whose attentive appraisals helped shape this book.

Likewise, we owe many thanks to our translators Andre Lafontaine, Sergei Levchin, and Katrina Sark, and our team of editorial assistants for their work on this collection. We are particularly grateful to Dru Jeffries, whose meticulous readings helped bring this volume to completion.

Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema received generous support at both of our home institutions, as well as from national organizations, and of course, from family and friends.

Lilya Kaganovsky would like to thank the University of Illinoiss Research Board; the federally funded Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center; the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; and the Program in Comparative and World Literature for providing research assistance, conference travel, and research travel support; and the American Council of Learned Societies, together with the National Endowment for the Arts and Social Science Research Council, for fellowship support that provided leave time for this project. She is particularly grateful to her friends and colleagues at Illinois, Cambridge, and beyond; and most importantly to R.R., S.R., H.., A.., and O..

Masha Salazkina would like to thank Concordia Universitys Aid to Research Related Events, Exhibition, Publication, and Dissemination Activities and the Faculty of Fine Arts for providing research and translation funds for this project, as well as her colleagues at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema for their advice and support. Without Igor Salazkins tireless search for books and Luca Caminatis unfaltering patience and unconditional support, none of this would have been possible.

Two of the chapters in the present volume were originally published in Russian in the excellent collection Sovetskaia vlast i media (Soviet Power and the Media, 2006), edited by Hans Gnther and Sabine Hnsgen. We are grateful to the editors, Gnther and Hnsgen, and to the authors, Nikolai Izvolov and Evgeny Margolit, for their permission to translate their work here. While the volume itself is out of print, an electronic version of the text is available at http://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/publication/23050177 .

THE TRANSLITERATION SYSTEM we use in this volume aims for readability in the text and accuracy in the notes. Russian names in the text are given in their conventional English-language spelling to render them more accessible, while Library of Congress system of transliteration is followed in all other instances. In translating titles of Russian films, we have also inserted articles where English fluency requires them.

Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF)State Archive of the Russian Federation

Gosudarstvennyi fond kinofilmov Rossiiskoi FederatsiiGosfilmofond

Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE)Russian State Archive for Economics

Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kinofotodokumentov (RGAKFD)Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents

Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI)Russian State Archive for Literature and the Arts

Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsialno-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI)Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History

Tsentralnyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva, Sankt-Peterburg (TSGALI SPb)Central State Archive for Literature and Art, St. Petersburg

SOUND, SPEECH, MUSIC IN SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET CINEMA

Masha Salazkina

KIRA MURATOVA, ONE of the most celebrated and original contemporary Russian film auteurs, was asked in a 1995 interview what she had learned from her film-school mentor Sergei Gerasimov, whose filmmaking was so distinct from hers. She answered that he taught her to listen and to hear, awakening [in her] an interest in and an elation from listening. In the same interview Muratova identified endless manipulations of accents, modes of delivery, and systems of repetition as distinguishing markers of her personal authorial style. There is little doubt that Muratova is the contemporary Russian director with the most developed sense of hearing; that she is a product of an institutional apparatus with its own complex relationship to the aural dimensions of cinemawhich her comment about Gerasimov seems to implymight well serve as a vector for reconsidering the aural in the larger tradition of the Soviet cinema.